Taylor Patterson - Reno, NV Mission

Hey Everyone!! This week was full of so many miracles!!!  First off I am getting transferred to go to the Elko 3rd Ward to be a District leader. So this week we went on exchanges with the zone leaders and I went with Elder Araujo from Brazil. We went to this town called Carlin. While we were there we found 2 families!!! One family has a daughter who lives in Ely who was baptized in September, and the others have been looking for missionaries and want to be baptized, it was so cool.  Then in the Elko 5th Ward we got 2 people on date to be baptized December 7th. They were on date for November but had an emergency so they couldn't make it in November. Then we met a family who wants their granddaughters to be baptized. They are 11 and will get baptized in January. Then we got another 11 year old who has read the Book of Mormon already and has restarted, he is on date for January. His mother is less active and dad isn't a member, but he comes every week he is so awesome....

Hey everyone!! So another week goes by here in Elko. We had a pretty busy week with a lot of lessons. We found two more people to teach here, and we also are hoping to get three people in Owyhee on a baptismal date within the next couple of weeks.  On Sunday we got to go to Owyhee and there were only 16 people there at the branch, but it was still a good sacrament. We did 10 hours of service this week! A lot of it was moving people in and out of homes and that was super fun.  I got to meet 2 families I haven't met here yet in Elko and they were awesome. The first family is the Natapu's, he grew up in Compton and man....he has some stories, he is super cool. We then met the Becks, he is a die hard Dallas Cowboys fan and man he had all sorts of stuff like football cards and signed Dallas stuff, I was in heaven.  Sadly we didn't have the baptisms this week so we are trying to get them back on date. However, we are still teaching a good amount of people an...

Hey Everyone!! This week went by super fast! Not too much happened but a lot happened at the same time. We had a lot of nonmember lessons, and we have 2 people on date for baptisms this Saturday. We initially had 3 but one of them has a lot of worries and mixed feelings so we are working on that. We found 6 new people to teach and then also found a less active member that wants to start coming back to church so that is really awesome.  On Sunday I had to give a 20 minute talk on who Christ is. I was pretty nervous but once I got up there all my nerves went away when I bore my testimony. I could see so many tears in peoples eyes and that made me feel good because I knew they were feeling the spirit. I had some tears in my eyes but the spirit was so strong so I just powered through them.  My spiritual message comes from my talk that I gave. In my talk I referenced Bishop Waddell when he came to talk to the East side of the mission. He stated 18 words on why Chris...

Hey Everyone!!! This week honestly flew by! We had so many things going on. We had zone conference on Friday and it was super good. We talked about a talk from Neil L. Andersen that he gave at  a 2016 mission president seminar. It is called "The Faith to Find and Baptize Converts" and it was really good. I got to see my last companion Elder Carl and that was fun. We got to say our zone stats for the month of October and they were AMAZING. Our zone found 112 new people, we are teaching 73, we have 14 out of 15 of the recent converts attending church and we have 15 people on date for baptism!!!! Our zone is on fire. My companion and I, through the spirit, helped another person get a date for a baptism this month. So we have a total of 4 scheduled!! 3 next week and one the week after. I am super pumped, most of the people we are teaching are progressing and it's pretty cool.  For Halloween from 6-9pm we had to stay inside so we were able to plan out our week and ...